California DROP: one deletion request to registered data brokers

You must be a California resident. CalPrivacy counts people who live in California, and people domiciled in California who are outside the state “for a temporary or transitory purpose.”

1. Verify residency through the California Identity Gateway, the state's digital identity platform. You can enter your details directly or sign in with Login.gov.
2. Create a profile. The minimum is your name, date of birth and ZIP code. You can add identifiers such as email, phone, mobile advertising IDs, connected-TV IDs and vehicle identification numbers, which brokers use to look for a match.
3. Submit the deletion request.

• January 1, 2026: DROP opened to consumers.
• From August 1, 2026: registered brokers must access DROP “at least once every 45 days” and process the deletion requests they find there within 45 days.
• Brokers have up to 90 days to report how they handled your request, and after that must re-check and delete new matching data “at least every 45 days.”
• If a broker can't verify a request, the law says it must treat it as an opt-out of the sale or sharing of your information.

• Deleted: the broker matched you and deleted any non-exempt personal information.
• Exempted: the broker has information about you but is permitted by law to keep all of it.
• Opted-out: the broker couldn't make an exact match from what you provided.
• Record not found: the broker holds no information about you.
• Pending: the broker hasn't processed the request yet.

• Sites that are not registered data brokers. DROP goes to registered brokers. Any business that meets the legal definition must register with CalPrivacy every January; you can search who has in the California Data Broker Registry.
• Businesses you deal with directly. A data broker is defined as a business that sells the information of consumers it has no direct relationship with. Information you gave a company yourself, such as when you opened an account, is not subject to deletion through DROP.
• Public records and publicly available data. CalPrivacy gives vehicle and real estate ownership and voting records as examples.
• Data covered by other laws. CalPrivacy lists health information under HIPAA, credit-related data under the Fair Credit Reporting Act, and financial information under the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act. The statute's definition of a data broker also excludes businesses covered by the FCRA, GLBA and California's Insurance Information and Privacy Protection Act.
• People outside California. Only California residents can use it.

If you live in California, file with DROP: it is free and reaches every registered broker in one request. Then cover what it leaves out. People-search sites that are not on the state registry, sites outside the US, and anyone not living in California still need requests sent site by site.

That is what the free kit and our opt-out guides are for: the kit writes requests that you send from your own mailbox, and each guide shows a site's own opt-out page. Whether a site acts on a request is up to the site. Removal is not guaranteed, through DROP or through us.